Starfish in the Bed
Suzie Too - Western Caribbean
David & Suzanne Chappell
Fri 1 Oct 2010 13:13
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We arrived at Cascais just at the river estuary that
runs down to Lisbon early evening and dropped the anchor. This is a really smart
place as it's home to Estoril, one of the F1 race circuits and where teams used
to do a lot of testing out of season. So if you need a Hugo Boss or Chanel
outfit for the weekend, here is a place to spend a months salary.
The following morning a guy in a dinghy came over and
said "Hi Suzie Too we met you in Mindelo in the Cape Verde islands". This was
Mike on a Bowman 42, Right Turn, who was taking the boat down on his own,
as his partner Kate has Grandmotheritis and is off helping rear sproglets,
before they get ready to cross again this year. We were so pleased to be
"back on the circuit again", he looked us up on his list and hadn't noticed the
boat was different, exactly what we wanted, to be recognised as Suzie Too. When
we pointed out we had a new boat he said "Oh I thought you looked big for 49
feet". We invited him over later that afternoon for the tradition of
Afternoon Tea on Suzie Too and had a good natter about friends, boat locations,
weather and crossings - great to be back out here again.
During that day we hopped into town on the dingy and
picked up a few grocery items from Pingo Doce, Suzanne's favourite Portuguese
supermarket and had lunch where we had sat with John & Robin of Panthera the
previous year, a beautiful warm sunny day with a slight chill as the sun dropped
in the evening.
Because of the time pressures on the VAT export we were
hoping to sail on Sunday, but checking the weather and talking with others it
looked a bit breezy. The following morning we had a F8 through the anchorage, we
had 60m of chain which was horizontal with the 8m of snubbing line working
overtime as waves broke over the bow and we swung beam on to 3-4m seas. As the
day progressed other boats in the anchorage went to the marina, but we
decided to stay put and test our anchor system with its huge 40kg Delta and we
held fine.
It was impossible to move around on the boat so we took
to bed and watched a couple of DVDs laying like starfish so as not to get thrown
out, by late afternoon we had had enough and decided to set sail for Portimao as
the wind was down to F6 and the following day winds looked light.
So we called Mike and he agreed it looked a good
decision based on the light forecast for Monday and we set off for yet
another rather lumpy night at sea as the F8 subsided. He got himself well
organied and had all 3 of his sails set and was off while we were still
trying to work out which line did what, well we haven't sailed her much yet - so
still learning the ropes as they say.
.
o
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